Dear Michael,
I started this letter to you on New Years Day. But I was so overwhelmed and drowning in sadness, that I couldn't bear to finish it. The realization that this was the first year, ever, that you did not occupy some part of this world during my entire lifetime, was debilitating. You may not have always been in my life, but God was preparing you to be. We may not have met yet, but my heart was always searching for yours. And now, knowing that part of our lives is finished, I just feel like I'm floating in limbo. I can't go back. As much as I beg God to turn back the clock, He isn't cooperating. I'm afraid of moving forward because the future looks so empty from where I sit. And I know, instinctively, that I can't stay here either.
The books and experts say that grieving is a journey. It's not a sprint. It can't be done all at once or in a rush. It can never be done on someone else's schedule and it can't be ignored. I guess this must be true? You've been gone a little over seven months and I still feel as if I'm just leaving the starting gate on this journey.
The worst of this journey is that it doesn't go in a certain direction. You don't start at point A and go to point B, you start out blindfolded with no compass. This journey winds around, doubles back, wanders in circles at times. Just when I think that I'm "adjusting" (whatever the heck that means), I fall off a cliff, or I stumble and fall and bruise my heart.
I think part of the "adjusting" is that there are times that you are a memory. Those times when I can talk about you without crying, tell funny stories or even relate the circumstances of your death, it's because I have divorced the "Flesh and Bones Michael" from those memories. I can think of you in the abstract. My "Memory Michael" didn't die, so I don't have to think of all that. As a memory, you can be right there in my conversations, in my threats when Tru doesn't behave, and in my thoughts when I need your advice. As a memory, you are safe and allow me to function When I allow myself to think of the real you, it rips my heart to shreds.
On New Years Day, I spent hours reading our emails. There are two thousand and seventy nine of them. I relived our courtship. The ups and downs, the hurt feelings, the feelings of love and expectation. The everyday life things. "What time do you get off work"? "Want to meet at the park"? "I love you". As I read those emails, you came alive again. You were resurrected with all your thoughts and words and feelings. As I read your emails, you came back to me. We were planning our wedding, buying the house, we were eager to begin our future together. And every time I stopped reading, you died again! Over and over, I felt the pain of your death like daggers cruelly thrust into my heart. And I thought "how can anything be this painful and not be fatal"? And I fell off the cliff.
And I grieved as I did that first day. I cried and begged for you to come back. I cried until I couldn't breath, until I was blanketed in agony and the tears continued to flow from my inner being. When I went to sleep, I begged for you to come to me in my dreams. I begged for the comfort of your presence, but even in sleep, there was no reprieve from the desolation in my soul. I awoke from my dreamless sleep, crying. My eyes were swollen, I was bone weary and the tears still came. And I searched for the warmth of you once again in our emails.
The tears finally stopped when a wonderful friend called to check on me and listened while I talked of my sadness and of my love for you. And when the tears stopped, I felt cleansed. I felt lighter and I felt stronger. It was as if my body had been purged of some sort of poison. As quickly and as violently as the grief had come, it was done for this day.
And like a weary traveler, I picked myself up, surveyed the damage, shook the dust from my shoes, and started out once again on this path of our journey.
I don't know where this path will lead in my life. I just have to keep moving forward. I don't know how many days, or months or years this will take, but I somehow feel that when this journey is over, when I reach the end, when I can finally rest my weary heart, it will be there that I find you once again.
You are my heart and my soul and I love you, Baby Boy.
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